Forces of Nature to Follow if You're Stuck at Your Desk

If you, as we also do, spend the day at your desk (or co-working station or coffee shop) slinging electrons around, adding value, optimizing synergies between stakeholders, paravirtualizing the hypervisor, and updating your Tinder account, you’re probably not thinking much about nature. The air, the water, the soft earth between your toes, the gentle caress of the evening air as the temperature begins to fall and the heat of the day fades away…After all, the warm beams of sun on your face aren’t going to get you any closer to discovering a cure for gluten intolerance or finishing that app that’s going to be the Uber for tubas are they? No they are not.

We’re not going to urge you to put the phone down and go outside for a change, but we are going to urge you to at least follow these forces of nature on Twitter. You’ll still be trapped in a Gorilla Glass-lined cave, but at least you’ll see the flickering shadows of reality on the touchscreen in front of you.

Follow @KarlTheFogT.S. Eliot had yellow fog that rubbed its back upon the window-panes and licked its tongue into the corners of the evening. San Francisco has a weightless overlord that rolls in from the sea, engulfing the Marina and the Presidio alike. He chills us to the bone and makes us wish we had brought a fleece, but he also protects us from the scorching inland temperatures. He giveth and he taketh away; like the tide he ebbs and flows across the Golden Gate Bridge. He’s the reason you can’t make assumptions about what the weather will be like today, the way you can in cities of a more constant clime. You might not go outside very much, but he’s a wry reminder that outside exists.

Follow the Sun This guy, man. It's just the same thing every day. "Hello Los Angeles! I will be with you for 13 hours, 11 minutes." Montreal, you get 13 hours, 48 minutes today. Suck it Tokyo, only 10 hours, 43 minutes for you. Always the same, always assuming we care that he's in Dublin or Mumbai or wherever the hell he has decided to grace with his tweetings on a particular day. I mean, do I tweet about the fact that I will be leaving the house at 8:09 and catching the 8:22 bus and arriving at work at 9:12 day after day? I don't because you know what? That's boring. So follow the moon too. Like any good satellite player, he's helpful and kind. He describes various phenomena in which he is involved (hello Supermoon diagrams) and he retweets people. Like a friend, a pal, and not some droning megalomaniac who thinks the world revolves around him.

Follow Greenland Fjord Like most forces of nature with Twitter accounts, he has a tendency to be a little self referential. (Recent tweet: New Paper: "Modeling Turbulent Subglacial Meltwater Plumes: Implications for Fjord-Scale Buoyancy-Driven Circulation"). But he’s also super duper depressing—a constant reminder that the ice is melting and it is not coming back. His pal Polar Ice Cap was just as depressing (if more humorous) but he seems to have stopped tweeting. Maybe his fingers calved off and were lost to the sea.

Follow SF Quake Bot (or other quake bot in an area of your choosing)So you know how, when you first learned about the microbiome, you went through a period of mild (or acute if you’re the hand-sanitizer type) disgust? Because germs are all over you right now, and many of them are the poop kind. But then you pulled yourself together and looked around and you realized that you’re not dead yet, so maybe all those little guys aren’t so bad. This is that, but for earthquakes. At first you’re like “Holy crap, I'm about to be sucked into the earth and crushed by tectonic plates.” And then you get more quaketweets and more and more and you realize that they’re harmless parts of your personal ecosystem, happening to you all the time, mostly outside the scope of your perception, but doing good, in their own way. (Until the big one hits, of course. You do have an earthquake bag under your desk, don’t you?)

Follow @LionsHeadCPTThis mountain is undoubtedly the most hostile landmass in South Africa. But don't hold it against him. He's been abused. Someone shot a porno on him earlier this year. Without his consent! So maybe he's got issues. Some size issues maybe, what with the Everest jokes, and jealousy problems as well—he got very pouty when Daniel Radcliffe hiked a competing mountain earlier this year. Do not date.

FollowThe Tweet of GodGod is on Twitter and He is pissed off at us for screwing up this nice planet He gave us, shooting each other with guns, refusing to grant marriage licenses, and generally being jerks. Also, He's occasionally hilarious.